Imagine that you need to catch a bus to return home after work. Will you decide to run as fast as possible to catch the first incoming bus? Or will you walk slowly to save your energy after an exhausting day, at the risk of missing this first bus and arriving late at home?

Foraging tasks are emerging as crucial models for naturalistic decision making in rodents . On mechanistic level, those tasks give us the opportunity to  understand how individual sensitivities to time and effort drive variability in the strategy of rodents facing an explore vs exploit dilemma. If those questions are of interest to you , there is an opening for a PhD position at the Centuri Turing Center for living systems in Marseille where the project is advised by David Robbe ( INMED, Marseille) , Eloy Christophe ( IRPHE, Marseille)  and Ahmed El Hady ( Cluster for Advanced Study of Collective Behavior, Konstanz ). The project will combine theoretical and experimental approaches to understand how foraging strategies vary in terms of their sensitivities to time and effort during a variety of experimental conditions.

We are looking for a candidate with a strong quantitative background, capable to developing numerical simulation/model (i.e. strong programing skills) and with a strong taste for animal behavior and cognition

For more details and application procedure , please check the website : https://centuri-livingsystems.org/phd2024-19/

Please do not hesitate to get in touch in case you have any questions,

Ahmed El hady

Dr. Ahmed El Hady
Group Leader
Cluster for Advanced Study of Collective Behavior
Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
Universitätsstraße 10, 78464 Konstanz
Room ZT 907
Postbox 687
Tel.: +49 7531 88-4742